[Trang Ánh Nam] New comment on Pete Buttigieg, the former small-city Indiana mayo....

Erin Burnett has left a new comment on your post "Pete Buttigieg, the former small-city Indiana mayo...":

The Iowa swagger is gone

The uncertain state of Buttigieg's campaign was clear in the final days before the South Carolina primary, where the candidate spent the week trying to do something he has been unable to do for the better part of a year: Establish a reliable foothold with black voters.

With a distant fourth-place finish, he wasn't able to do that.

The competitiveness with which the Buttigieg campaign approached Iowa, where the mayor barnstormed the state by often headlining five public events in a single day, was long gone in the days leading up to the South Carolina primary. Instead, Buttigieg spent his days headlining at most three events, with some being invite-only roundtables where the audience was, exclusively, the media.

Now Buttigieg's campaign is turning its focus to Super Tuesday, where 14 states across the country will vote and award roughly a third of all available delegates.

The former mayor's campaign lowered expectations heading into Super Tuesday, telling reporters that its focus is on strategically deploying resources across the country and hoping to rack up delegates by at least meeting the delegate threshold -- 15% -- in key congressional districts.

"Our goal is to minimize Sanders' margins on Super Tuesday and rack up delegates in the March 10th and March 17th contests, which are much more favorable to us," the campaign wrote in a memo that was used as a fundraising pitch on February 25.

But Buttigieg realized, according to aides, that even with a surgical focus on delegates, he did not have the momentum needed to compete nationally.

Buttigieg's campaign was also not as flush with campaign cash as it was months ago.

Money was still consistently coming into the campaign, said a source with knowledge of the campaign's fundraising, with the campaign raising above its daily average over the last few days. But the campaign's federal election reports have shown Buttigieg's operation is quickly spending whatever money it brings in -- and then some.

According to his financial filing for January, the former mayor entered February with $6.6 million in the bank and spent 227% more than they raised the first month of 2020. And the campaign has yet to hit their goal of raising $13 million before Super Tuesday.

One reason for the issue: The percentage of Buttigieg's fundraising from small dollar donors -- over time -- has fallen from 65% in early 2019 to just 29% in January, according to his financial filings.

Those money problems have led the campaign to only reserve $1.6 million in television ads in Super Tuesday states, according to data from CMAG, a small number that pales in comparison to most of his competitors. And because they are eager to avoid spending TV advertising money in expensive markets, the former mayor has trips planned to Raleigh, North Carolina; Dallas and Oklahoma City in the days before Super Tuesday as a way to get earned media without spending money on television ads.

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Posted by Erin Burnett to Trang Ánh Nam at March 1, 2020 at 6:05 PM